Slashdot Mirror
$100 Laptop Repriced at $175
prostoalex writes "The $100 laptop introduced by Nicholas Negroponte as part of the One Laptop Per Child program will end up costing $175, Associated Press says. The demand for the program is apparent as 'seven nations have expressed interest in being in the initial wave to buy the little green-and-white "XO" computers — Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya — but it remains unclear which ones will be first to pony up the cash.'"
...for the first person to complain that it doesn't run Vista.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
and thanks to Moore's law.
This isn't news, they've been saying this for over a year now.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Expressed interest. Expressed interest. Expressed interest. That's all we hear. Expressed interest. When's someone going to express a little cash?
I think they should rename this to One Laptop per 0.57 Child
Jack Valenti just fucking DIED of a stroke and all you can think about are $175 laptops?????
Alright, I'll get it over with: *ahem* Ding, dong, the witch is dead
Now thats over with, onto the more notable laptop. Got to say, still excited about this project. Last time I held a computer class in the DR, a massive power surge nearly killed me when the computer in question was powered up... These little things should be able to take the abuse, and the unstable power grids of many of these developing countries. Still cannot wait until a consumer model is released, so I can prepair a few classes on them for next time I go down.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Desktops are only more repairable if you have a geek-type house with a stash of spare parts. Try troubleshooting a desktop on a dirt floor in a mud hut and you'll find that it's a lot more delicate than a sealed unit. It looks to me like the OLPC is aiming at the sweet spot between 'rugged' and 'cheap', which will let the units get the maximum use per dollar in their target environment. Kind of like those kiddie computers you can buy (sealed unit, membrane keyboard, small LCD) but with enough grunt to be useful as an actual work or learning tool.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The dollar has lost so much value it's no suprise that it's going to start at $175. I think they should have called it the €100 euro laptop. I heard they expected after mass production for it go from $100 down to $50. It'll get their eventually.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
why do they need these governments to sign on? Can't they just, you know, sell them to people? Why force them (via their governments) to buy one?
I was under the impression that either the governments in question would be buying them or they would be paid for by charities. The families getting these laptops sure as hell don't have the funds to pay for them, so to the end user they will be free. That means you need some way (on site administration) for the "right" people to get the laptops, and you need a request for the charities to respond to. These two requirements are the job of the governments of the people in need.
We are all just people.
It seems to me that they could probably get the first batch paid for by us geeks who have been drooling over the OLPC hardware for a while.
Hell, I'd pony up ~$400-$500 for a unit. I wonder how many orders at that price point would be enough to get manufacturing cranking.
Plus, from my way of thinking, the OLPC project could use some more content creators doing homebrew design on the OLPC hardware.
. Penguins Surely Ca
Either you're a crazed hippie completely out of touch with reality, or you're a troll:
Euro value 4/26/05 = $1.29
Euro value 4/26/07 = $1.36
Not exactly spiraling out of control. Total loss of value in two years = 5.2%, not half.
Left 404: Why the RIGHT is WRONG
Neither Microsoft nor Sony are charities trying to bring free education to the poor of the world.
Why should we judge the OLPC project by the same standards that we judge multinational profit machines?
Why do I even have to ask this question?
What is wrong with you?
Jesus H. Christ.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I can understand the desire to get low cost computers into the hands of the underprivileged, really I do, it's an awesome goal. But I always have these nagging doubts if neutering the technology to get it to a cost they deem reasonable defeats the whole purpose. Remember when they tried to make those cheap internet appliances that grandma could use to check her email and surf the web? They had a dumbed down OS and scaled back hardware to make them cheap and simple to use, they also bombed horribly because they couldn't run any of the standard apps that a full on pc could. Same deal with webtv. So while this computer is cool how will it's usefullness fare long term when people discover they can't do all the stuff people are doing with their normal computers in the developed world?
Best Buy is currently selling a laptop, retail!, for $399. $399 laptop
And the specs on it are actually not half bad, not as bad as you might think:
15.4" screen
1.5 ghz Via C7-M
512 ram
128 meg shared video
DVD +/- DL burner
60 GB HDD
802.11 b/g
10/100 ethernet
v.92 modem
Vista Basic
Drop Vista and install Linux and you can save a few bucks, scale down the screen size and maybe eliminate a few usb ports and some other stuff, mass produce it and you could have a full on pc capable of running even windows vista for probably under 300 bucks. I have to think that something like that would be much more useful, even if you bought half as many it would still be better in the long run with it's upgradeability and standards compliance. Thoughts?
which are devices that hardly fit the description of "rugged"..
Have you actually used one? Like, at all? The machines are quite "rugged". Or were you just making a baseless claim?
As for why not desktop machines? Power requirements and portability are two of the reasons.
I get your point. It's fun to try to kick a little Slashdot ass. But I'll take your question seriously and try to answer it.
The idea of putting a laptop in the hands of somebody who can't afford the technology is very appealing. We like it. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we want to be part of that. Look at the other posts that say they'd spend $500 to buy one for themselves if they'd also send one to the originally intended recipients. That's a very strong statement of support. If the price goes to $175... well, who can really fault us for not willing to take back that we like the idea that low cost computers are being given to people who could really really could use them.
It wouldn't matter who made the mp3 player. Nobody wants to hear about a significant price increase on a plentiful commodity like an mp3 player. There's too much competition and Microsoft, explicitly, has a long history of credibility problems with delivering on their marketing claims in their product in the first place.
Aren't there a host of things missing from Vista? Aren't we all aware that the "revolutionary" new file structure got cut and that DRM was a priority? For Microsoft, you reap what you sow.
So I reject your comparison. We're not assholes (as your suggest - or at least, not for this reason), we just want to see the OLPC thing succeed.
AND
Negroponte's team has always stressed that $100 was a long-term target for the machines, but recently publicized figures had put it in the $150 range. Negroponte says the cost should drop about 25 percent per year as the project unfolds. He added that Citigroup Inc. (C)'s Citibank division has agreed to facilitate a payment system on a pro bono basis; Citibank will float payments to Quanta and other laptop suppliers, and governments will repay the bank.The project is still on track to its price target of $100, it is still in BETA FFS!
Quit with the FUD already! Theres nothing like working on something high profile to make you grow a bit of a distaste for /. hype!
Picking a couple of points isn't the most robust measure, especially with things as potentially volaile as currency. If you look at the five year trend, it doesn't look so good. The US dollar rallied a little in late 05, early 06, but generally it's steadily sinking down. The Grandparent post is radically overstating things, but the picture isn't as rosy as you want to make out either.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
"I might get modded off-topic for saying this, but ..." on slashdot people regularly post the question "How would slashdot react if Microsoft did this?" This post is usually modded insightful because the mods see it as thinking outside the box—it looks like you are breaking away from the herd mentality when you post this question. The only problem is that people regularly post this question, or a paraphrase of this question, so it really isn't too insightful.
This post usually gets one of two responses: "It would not be the same because..." or "Slashdot is not one person, the members of the slashdot community can disagree with each other."
This sig cannot be proven true.
I'd toss in my two cents worth on this issue. But with opinions hovering near three cents, I think I'll just save up for a better topic.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
A million school children with an ability to appreciate freedom of information, and the open source ideals that are the antithesis of Valenti's anti-copying propaganda... I just think of it as Jack's ideas being dead along with him.
On a more serious note, as for the priorities, should I stock up on beer or snacks for the Jack Valenti is Dead party?
The best thing the federal government could possibly ever do for the public schools is actually put some funding behind the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and No Child Left Behind. They make a fuckton of demands on the public schools, but then they don't back it up with funding. It's been like that since the 70's. Frankly if you're going to place strict requirements on the schools that they educate *everyone* even at significant expense, you should put your money where your mouth is.
Would you be upset if your boss told you "Okay bub, do this, this, and this. But I'm not gonna pay you for it since you're doing such a good job already."
And as for our schools being shitboxes I've got a questionnaire I'd like to ask you:
1.) Can you read?
2.) Can you write coherently?
3.) Can you do mathematics?
4.) Do you have a job that is not simply menial in nature?
5.) Do you have a decent understanding that there is a world outside your state?
6.) Were your parents able to work while you were growing up?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you may have benefited from a free public education.
SRSLY.
Everything takes longer and costs more.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The problem is endemic to a society that does not value education, and does not place personable responsibility above entitlement. In this case, the knife cuts both ways: stingy and selfish people do not want to fund schools; and apathetic and irresponsible parents do not enforce proper behavior in their children either at school or at home.
I guess that some people believe that other places have the opposite problem of the USA; whereas the USA has too many resources and not enough personal responsibility, there is a belief that other places, especially third world countries, have personal responsibility but not enough resources. So the goal of projects like this is to try to help people who, it is believed, would actually make something out of themselves given the chance, instead of squander whatever resources are spent to attempt to help them better themselves.
My personal opinion is that, the difference between the uneducated in the USA and the uneducated in a third world country is likely to be alot less than what other people may believe. I have been to a decent number of places in the world and the thing which strikes me most is that people everywhere are pretty much the same. The only real difference is the larger circumstances, usually beyond their control, that they find themselves living in. I think that more children in a third world country would benefit from something like OLPC than would children in the USA, but more because of their circumstances than anything else. In both cases, I think the number of actual children who will benefit from being given a free laptop with educational tools on it is not as high as philanthropists would like to believe.
That being said, I am a 100% supporter of OLPC because, first I think it's a cool project from a technical standpoint, and second, I think it *will* provide some benefit to today's generation of third-world children, and that this benefit will be multiplied as these children grow up and can help to educate even more of the next generation of third-world children. Also I like to hope that I am wrong in my assessment of humanity, and that things will go much better than I would have predicted.
I was doing tech support to a school network in Uganda a couple of years ago. They had a room full of machines. This was a concrete building with a good roof, but even so the 'mud hut' effect still happened. The amount of dirt that got inside EVERYTHING was frankly astounding. I'll never forget the day I spent removing bat droppings from all the mice.
So in hot, dusty under-developed countries, it is a problem. And the OLPC's membrane keyboard and sealed widgets are certainly welcome.
-1 not first post
Yeah, I was the info systems officer for a National Guard unit in Iraq. We had a mix of hardened laptops and off the shelf desktops. Lemme tell you which ones did better. We lost on average a desktop a month, and all told I had the hard drive on one of the hardened laptops die. This was over a one year period, and we were in decently built climate controlled wood structures. This program will do MUCH better with the laptops assuming they're as well built as claimed.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.